The one constant through all the years, Richie, has been rugby ☺

When Field of Dreams was released in 1989 I was fortunate enough to go to the premier in Auckland as I was working for a radio station at the time. I loved the movie, cried at the end and then read the NZ Herald review of the movie and wanted to go punch some sense into the critic who said that Kiwis would not relate to a movie about baseball.  The movie was not about baseball, sure baseball featured pretty damn heavily in the movie but it was not baseball that made, and still can make me tear up, when I watch the movie.

They could have changed the entire movie to a dairy farmer in Waikikamukau building a rugby field, putting up some posts, corner flags and marking the paddock and it still would not have been about rugby. It would have been about the memories associated with the game. I have only great memories of rugby (as rugby has taken away a fair chunk of my memory) but some of what I remember most is what happened around the game not necessarily the actual events on the field.

Last night I watched the 2011 Rugby World Cup Final again, for the first time since I watched it live at 4am with my son and travelling nurse :) I couldn’t remember the exact score, I couldn’t remember who scored the tries, the kicks that were missed and the fact that Beaver was wearing a kids sized jersey when he came on to win the game but I do remember the fear, the anxiety and the shitting of the pants feel I had when we couldn’t put the Frogs away. My son knew I was stressing the fuck out and bought me a rugby ball to hold onto, like Linus with his blanket, till we finally lifted the cup. Rugby has that effect on me, and many others like me (Hi bro) and I believe it has gotten stronger the longer I have been out of New Zealand.

As kids in NZ we worshipped the All Blacks, it is in our DNA. The All Blacks are national; they are all of us combined as a team. When we think of the Boys in Black we don’t necessarily think of King Richie, or Cowboy Shaw, or Buck, or The Boot, or of Jonah. We think of them as a team. Players may come and go but the All Blacks are a constant. They are without doubt the greatest sporting team of any sport and the fact that the sport they play is the one they play in heaven makes it even better.

As a 7 year old kid I punched an All Black in the stomach (Bruce Robertson) at the urging of my Uncle Colin. Bruce was stretchered off the paddock and I ran, screaming, to the car after finding out I had punched an All Black. Of course it was all a joke (really fucking funny Colin) however the nightmares have recently stopped so that is good :)  As a 13 year old I attended a test match at Eden Park with Dad and another Uncle who will remain nameless (Hi Brian) where we ate lemonades (they are not as lemony apparently) and then the ‘adults’ decided a few cold celebratories were in order. It seemed only fair as when I had been playing as a kid in the UK we always had a shandy or 2 after the game – I pretty sure the ‘adults’ were drinking something stronger than shandy though that day :)

1987 – first RWC was back home and the Boys in Black trained at my school – even as a 17 year old they were still Gods to me. I remember Bucks bleeding side mounted cauliflowers, forcing the ball every time they crossed the try line and getting the entire teams signatures whilst missing some classes that were probably really important and the reason I am now in sales J

In 1988 I shook the meat platters that Andy Hayden called hands, he was offering me condolences after the loss of our amazing friend Sherilyn in the Ultraman, I called him sir and he seemed to block out the sun at the time.

By the legal drinking age of 20 I had been working in radio for a bit and had imbibed a few times with some Boys in Black, a couple of them even knew my name and had bought me drinks. As individuals I no longer gave them Godly status, I had shaken hands with, had my back slapped by and shared urinal troughs with men that, even though they were human, were still a step above us standard edition mere mortals.  

One of my favorite stories was how my brother Jonno once tackled Jonah Lomu and stopped him from scoring a try. Well, technically he didn’t so much tackle him as get tangled in the tree trunks he called legs but down the great man fell and later that day Jonno woke up :)

Every town back home has a rugby paddock and every person has a story. Sure there are some bad anecdotes out there about individuals doing silly things but all in all when we think rugby we think of the great deeds of the Men in Black and sometimes the annoying losses. Whilst we never speak of World Cup losses to Les Blues sometimes we will mention a certain yappy and annoying halfback batting out the ball from Geoff Wilsons arms to win the game. Or Fitzy pissing off Nobody so much that he threw a punch at him. The Welsh talk about diving out of lineouts and the Bok fans will talk about Invictus, Mandeeba and (probably not that often) the 1981 tour. However where ever rugby fans meet, be it watching a game, coaching a game, at a bar or just a chance encounter at the local Kwik-E-Mart they will always mention the Men in Black. They often have no idea of the individual players but they sure as hell know of their record as a team.

This years Rugby World Cup, for some reason, seems even bigger to me than any preceding it. It might be that I know that I am now fully ensconced in North Carolina, it might be that I am getting involved in local rugby here and helping the awesome Coach Matt with the Cary Claymores, it might be that I am hoping that cousin Joe will be playing for the Maoris next year when they head to Chicago (will see you there) but I am pretty sure the main reason is that now my son is starting to relate to Dad’s love of the game.

4 years ago he brought me the ball to allay my nerves during the 2011 Final, this year he got up at 4am again to watch a terrible quality stream of the All Blacks playing the Convicts (really need to do something for us overseas fans NZRFU for fucks sake). I remember getting up at 3am back home as a kids to watch games with Dad. I remember the great friendships I made on the paddock that have latest me a lifetime. I remember hearing about Row Williams asking if it was ‘Fucking Roberts’ that headed the ball on Number 2 vs St Peters (it was me and it was legal) and I remember Michael Diamond from New York watching us play in his designer suit and shoes with his mouth fully agape and comments like ‘You are all fucking crazy’. The rugby billets, the cold beers, the taped up fingers, the fights, the tackles, the broken fingers and arms, the wins and the losses are all as one.  We never played for participation trophies, we always played to win but more importantly we always played as a team.

Playing as a team, that is what the All Blacks mean to me. Playing as a team, that is what rugby means to me. There is no more important team in your life than your family, a very close second is your friends and rugby embodies team more than any other sport or activity. 

This post has been a tough one to write, partly because RWC 2015 kicks off shortly and I need to get the fuck out of here. It is tough to put clearly into words what rugby means to me and my bros without telling 1,001 stories about how much we love the game and how much we wish we were still playing. But it is so much more than the game itself. It is the pride that we have for the Men in Black, it is the pride that we have when we put on our replica jerseys and tell war stories of broken noses and arms and knocks to the noggin. The story is not about the game, it is about the memories of family, of friends, of victories, of losses. It is the story of how we learned to be the men we are, how we learned to make decisions and support them. Now it is up to me and Jonno (at the moment) to pass that passion and education down to our kids the same way Jeff and our coaches and team mates did to us.

To steal a few lines from "Field of Dreams" (see if you can pretend this is Keith Quinn saying this)

Richie, people will come Richie. They'll come to Oamaru for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as children, longing for the past. Of course, we won't mind if you look around, you'll say. It's only $20 per person. They'll pass over the money without even thinking about it: for it is money they have and peace they lack. And they'll walk out to the bleachers; sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. They'll find they have reserved seats somewhere along one of the sidelines, where they sat when they were children and cheered their heroes. And they'll watch the game and it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces. People will come Richie. The one constant through all the years, Richie, has been rugby. New Zealand has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But rugby has marked the time. This paddock, this game: it's a part of our past, Richie. It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Richie. People will most definitely come.

So I am off to watch the opening ceremonies for RWC 2015 and then Fiji v England. I am looking forward to creating more memories, making new friends, cheering for the underdogs (including, of course, the American Eagles) and the entire event. It is not about the game, it is about the journey.

So work hard, play hard and earn your inspiration

Happy Poets Day

Go the Blacks